Technical Rescue: Practice, Practice, Practice!

It's like learning a foreign language. At first, it's work, even a struggle. And if you don't keep reviewing over and over again, you can pretty much lose most everything you've gained within days. Then, eventually, you realize you don't have to work at it quite so hard anymore—that you just get it and things make sense. And before you know it, you're fluent. That's basically what I hope will happen with these technical rescue skills I'm trying to master.

Master. Ha! That's difficult to imagine right now. But I'm trying as hard as I can to get the hang of these skills and to commit them to memory, both in my mind and my body. I want my legs and arms and hands and whatever other parts might be involved to execute the knots and the moves and set up the systems like it's all second nature. That's going to take time. And a lot of it.

I went away for two weeks recently on that trip to Colorado, and when I got back and started to think about Rock Rescue Academy again, I was amazed to find how much I'd already forgotten. I was pretty ticked off at myself, actually. And frustrated.

Then I went to a practice session one evening, where we learned something new—the "hot changeover" from ascending to rappelling—and I was even more frazzled. At least, on my first attempt. I was on the rope, sweating and swearing for about half an hour, hanging about 10 feet off the ground in the SAR building, trying to get things figured out. At one point, a teammate even climbed up a ladder to give me some assistance.

After a break, though, practicing with the Rescue 8 rappel device and the release mechanism on the ascenders while on the ground, then lengthening my self-belaying Prusik which was way too short the first time, I went up for another try. 

That time went much better and much faster while a teammate talked me through the whole process, so I'll have to practice, practice, practice that too if I'm ever to do it on my own... while hanging off a cliff. Which will probably be soon, during our next official practice.

In the meantime, I've been getting together with new tech team members and an experienced member at the SAR building to go over skills. This last time, I figured I'd take photos of the set-ups, which would hopefully help me remember how everything goes.

Here are some of those pictures:

This first one is a rescue rack loaded and tied off, ready for lowering.



Here, we're doing a "hot changeover" from a lowering system to a raising system, which is done while the load (i.e., the attendant, patient, and equipment) is on the rope, mid-face. The green webbing with a Prusik is temporarily holding the weight of the load as we attach pulleys and other equipment for a raise with a 3-to-1 mechanical advantage. (Ooh, don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about?)


Next is a tandem Prusik belay with a load-releasing hitch (green rope). The tandem Prusik belay consists of a long Prusik (blue) and a short Prusik (red) attached to the belay line (the yellow rope).


And this is a Meunter hitch, used with the load-releasing set-up. This hitch comes into play if the force of the load is transferred onto the belay line and the Prusiks (in the tandem Prusik belay) become locked. This might happen in the event of a fall or if the belayer doesn't move quickly enough to keep up with the main line, maintaining slack on the belay.

Without the load-releasing hitch, you'd basically be screwed or have to come up some other way (which there probably is, I just don't know... or don't know if I know it yet) to get those Prusiks unlocked. Under force, they're said to "melt" on the rope.


So, those are the sorts of photos I took to help me go through the steps of setting up anchors, lowering and raising systems, and belays in my head as I lie awake at night, wondering if—or, rather, when—I'll get the hang of all this. That is, if my teammates have the patience to put up with me long enough.

Overdue Hikers, Party Of Eight

At noon on Monday, my phone rang. It was our team captain, calling to say thank you for my help on the mission early that same morning and to tell me I did a good job. He said, "Eight is a big group to bring out, and you (meaning, the three of us who responded) went right in there and got the job done. The family was very appreciative."

Well, that sure was nice to hear. The part-time coordinator in charge of the mission also had let us know how much he appreciated our help. All in all, it was an easy mission with a good outcome, so I really hadn't expected the extra thank yous. Regardless if anyone says it, though, I know what we do as volunteers is definitely not taken for granted by the Sheriff's Department, and I'm as glad as ever to be part of the team.

Anyhow, on Sunday afternoon I had returned from a four-day trip to La Quinta, California, where I'd gone for a Jazzercise event. (No, we don't wear leg-warmers like they did back in the day. 😏) I'd worked out for three hours on Friday and six on Saturday, and all that exercise, the 110-degree heat, and the six-hour drive home had me feeling pretty beat. So, I was really tired when my pager went off just after midnight on Monday, after only two hours of sleep.

But I was fully awake when I got to the SAR building, where I met up with a teammate and waited for a third, who had been called directly. The two of us who'd initially responded to the page would have been comfortable going up the West Fork Trail alone—we were both familiar with it and knew it was pretty easy hiking for the first few miles—but our Captain wanted a third person to go along. As he explained, with three, if one of us had to stay behind with the subjects in case of a medical issue (one of the kids was asthmatic) or an injury, the other two could hike out together to get additional help. Radio communication from the canyon would likely not be possible and a cell phone wouldn't work out there, so it made sense that three of us go in.

The situation involved a family group including five juveniles, the youngest being 11, who'd set out to thru-hike West Fork, which is about 14 miles long. The route involves wading and some unavoidable swimming. They'd started out with 12 people (contrary to the newspaper report, which states there had been 10), two of whom had turned back about two miles in. Two of the faster hikers had gone ahead as agreed and hiked out by around six pm. But the eight others didn't appear at the lower trailhead, where their rides were waiting, before dark. The mother of three of the kids agonized about calling SAR, she said, but finally made the decision to do it.

As my two teammates and I were en route to the staging area at the lower end of West Fork, a helicopter spotted a campfire in the canyon, about two miles from our location. With the coordinates of the light source programmed into my GPS, the three of us headed up the trail in the dark, crossing the creek (West Fork) no less than five times, calling the names of a few of the subjects and sniffing the air for any hint of campfire smoke.

As we hiked, I ran through possible scenarios in my head. Many missions have not gone as I'd expected, either one way or the other—better or worse—so I wondered if this one would be as straightforward as I'd been thinking on the drive to the staging area. Could the child with asthma have had a serious problem? Was one of them hurt? Had they gotten separated?

There was no response to our frequent calls or whistles. Not until we got within yards of the coordinates, when I finally heard a shout. Within moments, I saw several people—adults and kids—standing on a rise on the opposite side of the creek. As we made our way over to them, I called, "Are you all together? Are all of you okay?" And they answered that, yes, they were all fine and accounted for. So I guess this was going to be as straightforward as I'd guessed.

After the three of us SAR members offered extra clothing, drinks, and snacks, accepted by only a couple of the kids, we turned around and slowly hiked back out with me in the lead, one in the middle of the group, and the other taking up the rear.

Turns out, the group had simply been slower and taken longer than expected, apparently because of the younger kids. They'd also gotten "a bit lost" at one point, they said. Then they just ran out of time and decided to stop until daybreak. They'd seen the helicopter fly over and figured it wasn't a coincidence, so they knew someone would probably come along.

Just before we'd found them, just after first light when we'd been able to turn off our headlamps, the group had put out their campfire and gotten ready to hike the rest of the way out. They said they'd had water filters with them and space blankets for everyone, so they were all in pretty decent shape other than one scraped leg and a couple of chilly kids, whose clothing hadn't completely dried.

Once we'd deposited the eight of them back at the trailhead with their waiting family and friends, the three of us headed back to the SAR building. Not long after, I was in Jazzercise class again and, later Monday evening, at tech team practice where I really started to feel the lack of sleep. My brain was sluggish, and I was having trouble getting the hang of what we were being taught (how to change from ascending to rappelling while on the rope). So when I got home at 10 p.m., I decided to turn my pager off for the night. I wouldn't be of much help to the team or anyone else until I'd gotten some good sleep.

You can read the Arizona Daily Sun article, Search Team Aids Overdue Hikers, Stranded Climbers, about this and other recent SAR calls.

The SAR I Missed While On Vacation

Not that I'm sorry we went. Heck no! We had a great time hiking and taking a scenic train ride in Colorado (all of which you can read about here... and here... and here if interested), but I'm always curious to know what goes on with the search and rescue team while I'm away. Yes, I'm a nosy girl.

So, when I got back to Flagstaff late Saturday night, June 20th, I couldn't resist calling the SAR line and listening to the most recent recorded message. It was from Friday evening around 8:00: a call-out for an overdue juvenile mountain biker. But I didn't read anything in the newspaper about that search in the days that followed and haven't heard anything from my teammates, so I'm wondering if that situation quickly resolved itself.

I did, however, see a couple of other SAR-related news stories in previous issues of the Arizona Daily Sun, including Body Recovered From Oak Creek Canyon (which I'm assuming some of our tech team members were involved with) and Searching Dangerous Depths, the latter about the special new (and expensive) camera the Sheriff's Department recently acquired that can be lowered into deep, confined spaces. In this case, it was used to continue the search for German physicist Reinhard Kirchner, who disappeared in the Hell Hole Bend area of the Little Colorado River back a couple of years ago. But nothing but rattlesnakes were found in the particular sink hole that was searched last week.

I know I also missed some Rock Rescue Academy training while I was away, but I don't know exactly what or how much. Kindly, one of my experienced teammates emailed me and offered to get together with me next week for some rope work, so that should help refresh my memory of what I've already learned and maybe even catch up a little. He tells me the next tech training will be on July 25th, so I'll have a little time to practice before then... which is right before I go away again for two weeks and three weekends, when Steve and I will be canoe-camping in Minnesota's Boundary Waters and hiking in the North Country, too.